My Overall Impression of "The Land Down Under"

Gosh where to even begin! I feel like I have told you how I feel about everything in my previous blogs already. I might as well wrap it all up into one now. Australia was amazing! I couldn't have ever imagined it being half the trip that it was. The education on the trip was one that could not have been improved in any way possible. The group was PERFECT! The chaperones/chaperone family was AWESOME! The only thing that really sucked was the food, but hey i'm still alive am I not?! Even though I didn't eat much on the trip, I still found myself having the time of my life. The trip wouldn't have been the same without blogger being late to the bus most of the trip because he was eating up those last few seconds of uploading pictures and doing his blog! It wouldn't have been the same without Grant Gardiner saying "Proud of you" and "Karaaaa" at the perfect moments. It wouldn't have been the same without Michael Wimer's impression of Earl Dibbels Jr every single day on the bus. NOTHING would have been the same without every single person that attended this trip including the best sponsors in the world. Thank you to all the people who organized this trip (Mishelle Hay) and all who helped this be financially feasible for me. Until our next trip to Australia guys....Good day mates! :)

Some call them friends...after this trip I call them my Australian family :)

Analyze #2?! NLIS system!

Well, I wrote the food blog..apparently "someone" didn't read/understand the directions on that blog. So, I suppose I will write yet another! :)

I guess that the analyzation of different agricultural principles from Australia to the United States could go on forever. The difference that I was most impacted by was the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS). This system is used in the same was our our eat tag system would be used in the United States. So now your thinking...ok so why do you think its so different then?! It is all electronic! These ear tags are electronic and they have different types of readers that read the ear tags. This special ID number specific for that animal is then transmitted into the Victorian electronic computer system. This unique system has the ability to trace the animal from the producer to the point of slaughter. This system has SO many advantages! The advantages that I see are that their traceability is so much better than the United States. They know where that animal has been from the beginning of its life to the ending point. Also, if there was a disease case (example BSE) they could trace that animal within 2 hours and figure out the source of where the disease originated. This in my opinion is huge! It would be really nice to be able to know this, esp. with the modern day disease problems that we have had. This whole system is built into a data system over the computer.
Now for the disadvantages that I saw in the system. The computer system alone costs the producer $2,000 to have it on site. For a small operation this is just not feasible. Essentially what I see is that the hobby farmer will phase out in Victoria because of this cost. It also cost around $1 per ear tag. That is expensive compared to our ear tags! These are the only problems that I see with the system. It would be really hard to get the "grandpa" farmers in on this system as well just because it has to do with computers. I think that our generation would take to it a lot better than the older generations would because we are more comfortable with the electronic system as we have grown up with it.
Overall, I would call the Victorian system ahead of the times compared to the United States. The traceability on the cattle is just amazing. Even though there are cost disadvantages, I think the overall positives outweigh the negatives. If you would like to learn more about this system then you can visit http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/agriculture/farming-management/nlis. Enjoy!

Here is an example of the different NLIS ear tags! Pretty sweet huh?!

Analyze Australia...What have I been doing?!

Well, guess its time to analyze this trip to Australia. I thought that is what I had been doing throughout the blogs, but I guess it is time for a more detailed version. :) The topic that I choose to analyze that was SOOOO different from America is the food!

Now, lets get to analyzing! It all started with a little dish called chicken schnitzel! Australian's LOVE this dish apparently because it is on every single menu that we ordered off of. I still to this day do not know exactly what chicken schnitzel is. At one point I heard it was fried veil, then I heard it was actual chicken. I never tasted it personally. Every time I looked at it I more felt that gagging feeling than a lets bite into it and see how it taste feeling! The beginning of the trip was a set menu. We had 3 choices. Chicken schnitzel, fish, or veil (all served with chips). I know what your thinking...potato chips, right? NO! They were french fries! I can't tell you how often Kandi Schaake and I lived off of french fries. It was nearly every meal at the beginning. I thought oh things will get better! Nope! We had a couple of meals the whole time that I ate more than french fries. I ate the steak meals. Every single steak meal! Even though it was not the same grain fed beef, it was still a steak! We had a grass fed steak at the emu farm, so that was a different experience. The best steak that we had was at the Spry Shorthorn ranch because it was grain fed beef. :) I will never forget the meal where we went out for seafood. I don't like seafood from the beginning, so I tried the fried shrimp thinking it would be the safe bet (along with many others). We soon found out that nothing was a safe bet if you weren't a seafood fan at this restaurant! My shrimp had eyes and tasted quite fishy! 

My supper attacked me! AHHHH

See told you it had EYES!

My "shrimp" feast!

I still don't know what Hailey was eating...

This was "cooked" salmon...WRONG!

Kyla made her food into art! :)

Biggest grape EVER! And I ate it....

Some sort of dessert?!

Steak time! 

This was by far the biggest thing that affected me on the trip to Australia. Even though I didn't eat much on the trip, I still found myself having the time of my life. The trip wouldn't have been the same without blogger being late to the bus most of the trip because he was eating up those last few seconds of uploading pictures and doing his blog! It wouldn't have been the same without Grant Gardiner saying "Proud of you" and "Karaaaa" at the perfect moments. It wouldn't have been the same without Michael Wimer's impression of Earl Dibbels Jr every single day on the bus. NOTHING would have been the same without every single person that attended this trip including the best sponsors in the world. Thank you to all the people who organized this trip (Mishelle Hay) and all who helped this be financially feasible for me. Until our next trip to Australia guys....Good day mates! :)

Loved this Group!

Flight back home :(

Today is the day that we all are forced to go back to our normal lives. Its time to go back to America, Land of the Free, United States, however you want to say it but in normal terms is called reality. We all woke up and were on the bus by 3:45 this morning. I was still quite sick and not feeling up to par. The boys were so good to me today. I think that almost if not every guy carried my luggage today. That really shows how great of guys we had on this trip. I couldn't thank them enough for doing that for me today. We set off and headed for Brisbane. This was where we said goodbye to Graim. He was a great tour guide and a great gentleman. He insisted on getting some electrolytes in me and bought me a powerade. I think that is a big part of why I began feeling better! After Brisbane, we took board for yet another long 14 hour flight. I didn't sleep much at all. We landed in LA and here is a picture of our plane!

We then flew to Dallas where we would board our last flight back to Kansas. This of course felt like the longest flight because we were all ready to be off of the airplane by this time. We arrived in Kansas and it was there where my mom welcomed me home! :) It was so hard saying goodbye to all of our friends and our amazing sponsors. It was a trip that I will never forget and will be my most memorable college experience. Until my next Australian adventure......So long mates!

Katelyn

Australia down hill. :(

Well, I am writing this blog after the fact of Australia. You might ask yourself why would she be doing that?! Well....its pretty simple. I was upchucking from the second day in Cairns until it was time to board the flight home. Let me set the setting for you....

It started off as an early morning from the beginning. We took a walk to where we would apparently board this ship to go to the Great Barrier Reef. I was sooooo excited for this day. It was one of the things I was looking most forward to....that is until the boat started moving. You know how usually a boat ride can be a little rough. I think we were all expecting that. What I wasn't expecting was what we got....it wasn't a short wave kind of a trip. It was extremely long waves with drops in my stomach at every peak. I was on this boat no more than 5 to 10 minutes, and I knew I was in BIG trouble. All of a sudden, i reached for the front of the seat....I knew it was coming. I couldn't hold it in anymore....I was pukin. I don't know exactly how long that ride was because I was too busy praying it would be over soon, but I think it was somewhere around an hour. It was one of the worst hours of my life. Knowing that you are in a situation that you absolutely can't get out of AND on top of that....knowing that you would have to go through it all over again on the ride home. :( We finally arrived at the (I think they called it green island). It was there where everyone signed up for scuba diving (the one thing I really wanted to do in Australia). I decided the second I stepped off the boat that I would not be scuba diving. I set out with some friends that decided against the scuba diving and did a little bit of snorkeling.

I got a more powerful pill for the next ship ride. I never got sick again, but unfortunately the feeling never went away. We got to the outer reef which was where they all scuba dived. I decided when I got to the outer reef that I would try scubadooing along with Grant and Pake. I do NOT regret my decision. I had a GREAT time and it involved no energy. It was an underwater moped essentially! I wish I had pictures, but they are all on Grant's camera. I will try to post some later hopefully.

The rest of the trip I was sick in bed. A HUGE thank you goes to my amazing sponsor Kandi Schaake and my awesome friend Candace Weeda for helping me and taking care of me the rest of the trip. I can't thank you all enough! Even though the trip didn't end the way I wanted it to, I still had the time of my LIFE and wouldn't change it for the world! Thank you to all my friends that went on the trip and my sponsors for being awesome! Love to all!

Katelyn

Culture time! ;)

Today we got on yet another flight and headed to Cairns! It has been a great trip so far. We got on a (to us is a short 3 hour flight) compared to what flight we have coming in the next couple of days.

Today we took a step back and learned about the Australia Aborigines culture. We landed in Cairns and headed to the Tjapukai Cultural Center to sharpen up on our culture! We started out with a short video explaining their spiritual faiths and what they believe. Some of us listened to it in English...others listening in Chinese and didn't know it until the program was close to being over. This individual just thought that the program was very interpretive! haha It was a very different kind of a belief, but it was interesting to see how they believe the world first began. We then got to see the different cultural dances. This was pretty interesting. We were often hoping that his leather skirt or whatever that was wouldn't be too revealing with him jumping around like that! :/ The next part was the coolest part yet! We got to learn how to throw a boomerang and the spear! Some were very good at it, but most of us...well we stunk at it! :) We rounded out the experience by learning about how they made their weapons and a short digerdo performance!

We then went back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner. This is Hailey Clemons birthday so we headed to this "great" sea food restaurant! It was awful! I thought it would be safe to get the fried shrimp right?? Nooooooo! My shrimp still had EYES! Here is a few pictures to prove how my dinner went! And to answer your question...yes it did come back up later! Until next time, good day mate! :)

SYDNEY!!!!

Well today is a travelling day. We are headed to Sydney. Before we went to Sydney, we took a tour of Charles Sturt University with Dr. Peter Chenoweth.  Dr. Chenoweth was a previous Kansas State University graduate specializing in reproduction. He showed us all of the different units that they had. Eighty students can board their horses at the equine unit. It was a pretty nice unit. The beef cattle unit was developed based on Temple Grandin’s philosophy. They were definitely top of the line facilities. This was surprising considering the university seemed so small. We got to take a tour of the vet med center. This vet school was so awesome! If I had the chance then I would have definitely applied. There facilities are so good I will post pictures, but it will not suffice just how smart they put things together, esp. their equine part. I cannot apply there because they are not a credited university.  My license could not transfer back to the United States. I guess I will just have to stick to staying in the USA for that one!  Our last thing we did was finally got to see a real sheep dog work. It was a really cool thing to see, and I wish I had a cattle dog that worked as well as he did.

We then loaded up on the bus and headed for Sydney! It was a long 5 hour bus ride. Most of us slept a lot of the way. We finally got to eat some American fast food. It was KFC, and it was yummy!

When we arrived in Sydney we checked into our hotel. WOW! Talk about nice. We finally got a beautiful hotel room. It made up for all of the other hotels that have not exactly been “5 stars”. Sydney is something that I will never forget. The best way I can describe it is to think of New York City and double the size. It was a lot of city life, but the architecture was just amazing!

Unfortunately, we only got to spend half a day in Sydney. When we arrived, we checked into the hotel and only had two hours of free time. I used that free time to finally do some shopping. I got some really cool things and cant wait to show you all when I get home.

After shopping we boarded a cruise ship. We took a ride on the Sydney Harbor. We got to see Sydney’s famous bridge, the famous Opera House, and all the skyscrapers that Sydney had to offer. The meal was a very elegant 3 course meal. I had a lot of chicken.  We got to go see the sights out on the deck of the ship. Unfortunately, the pictures didn’t turn out the best since it was so dark. No words could describe how awesome of an experience that was to see out on the water.

I rounded out the evening by going shopping with Kandi, Scott, and Hailey. I headed up to bed shortly after so that I could reorganize my suitcase for tomorrow’s big flight. All aboard the next flight to Cairns! Beach time!

Fun in the Sun